Did you know that the odds of you having ever been born are 1 in 400,000,000,000,000? That’s supposed to say one in four hundred trillion in case I typed that big stupid number wrong. So through the chances of your parents being born from their parents and so on, your parents meeting and then choosing to have sweaty coitus together, you out racing the billions of other sperm to your mom’s eggs during the backstage Righteous Brother’s “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” concert tour gangbang in which you were conceived, surviving the whole gestation period, and then surviving birth; you were born as the biggest lottery winner on Earth. Even if there are like 7.5 billion other birth lottery winners on Earth right now, that’s just a sign that too many couples are playing the lottery. And the odds of a 30 year old man dying from all things imaginable on any given day is 1 in 260,000 and a 30 year old woman’s odds are 1 in 583,000 (once again, fuck your feminist lies). So your odds of dying at any time are far better than the random cosmic chance of your existence and you’ve beaten all of those enormous odds up to this moment in time. So what the fuck is holding any of us back from dominating the planet?

For myself, not only was I born but I have died twice and managed to come back. I have beaten the odds of life and death on different occasions and the fact that I’m not drooling on myself in a wheelchair is a whole other set of odds that I’ve beaten. But who knows, maybe I am dead and this is how shitty the afterlife really is and this blog is a warning from the mysterious hereafter to all of those that read it. Anyway, with all that said, what the fuck is it that’s holding me back from doing whatever I want?

So I have been investing in the stock market for 12 years now and I have spent the good part of this past year teaching myself how to invest rather than relying on my investment manager to do all of the work for me. I’ve been moderately successful with it too. It’s felt kind of cool but two things it hasn’t been is difficult or scary. It’s a little scary I guess, but I’ve never put enough eggs into one basket to worry about going broke. Even with the recent shakiness of the markets, namely China and their bullshit but that’s a whole other topic, I’m never too worried. I need to do something that scares me and I need to feel scared before I dive into it.

I haven’t written anything on here in a few months and I need and want to get back into the habit of writing on here, and while I’m going to continue writing random bullshit I want to dedicate part of this blog to conquering my fears. I don’t even know what those fears really are yet, but I will find them, and I will deal with them, and hopefully I’ll write something all sorts of silly-billy about them. I am going to start very small but of course those fears will naturally progress into conquering bigger fears. I’ll try to do something scary everyday but I doubt that will happen because we’re all probably only a few hundred fears away from playing Russian roulette with a double-barrel shotgun while doing the cinnamon challenge and kidnapping a baby, even if you’re a highly phobic person. So while I try to exercise my fears everyday and repeatedly exercise them to rid myself of those fears, I doubt I’ll write about it everyday, but every week. But if I write it on here, and whether anyone even reads this or not, I am signing a personal promise to overcome as many of my own fears as I can starting tomorrow.

Boy, am I pooped. I drove my exercycle around my living room for 45 minutes, went on an angry power walk, and then took another cruise into the sunset on my exercycle. I’m not even fat, in fact I’ve been called a ‘ripped bro’ by my fraternity brothers that live in the quads with me, but I’m trying to get even leaner and lighter because of my fussy back and for the additional sex appeal. And I am getting slimmer because it is known human biology that if less energy is introduced into the body then the body will rely on its own stored energy to make up for the loss, and this happens regardless of whatever words are being unintelligently spewed from that human body’s mouth, like the phrases “I barely eat anything!” or “muh genetics!”

 

Okay, so the improperly named grapefruit is one of my favorite fruits and I’ve been going apeshit on them this summer, and I went to buy more of them before dropping by Dr. Bill’s office to pick up my liquor prescription. With all of the gorgeous fruits and vegetables in the HIV’s produce section, their grapefruits are rather overpriced and shitty, so I went to Wal-Mart instead. So I grab two bags of grapefruit at Wal-Mart, totally uneventful, and I’m standing in the self checkout line because I always use self checkout when it’s available. While standing in line these two girls that looked to be in their late teens to early twenties got into line behind me.

 

Height wise I am somewhere between 5 foot 7 inches and 6 foot 3; I’m not sure because I haven’t measured my height in years. Both of these girls behind me were about the same height as me and they were both talking about how they can’t stand short guys. I didn’t really care what they were talking about because I wouldn’t have sex with either one of these girls unless there was money involved, and unlike tall people I can say that I’ve been short my entire life, so I came to terms with it half a lifetime ago. Then one of the girls taps me on the shoulder and asks, “By the way, how tall are you?” And then they giggled amongst themselves for a second. Then she says, “I’m just screwing with you, don’t worry.” I smiled and turned back around.

 

I wasn’t offended because I lack enough autism to know when someone is joking and when someone is trying to piss me off, and she was just joking, maybe even flirting a little judging by how close she was getting to me. This girl was most likely 15 or more years younger than me and outweighed me by at least 50 pounds and she was buying boxes of macaroni and a 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper. So I stood there with my back towards them for a couple of minutes and then I turned around and shattered her world with 5 words. I didn’t even make a comment, I asked her a question. I said, “How much do you weigh?”

 

You would have thought that I had just pulled out a gun and shot and killed her cheeseburger right in front of her. Both her and her friend’s jaws dropped in obvious emotional distress.

 

Fat Butt: “Um, excuse me, but what the fuck did you just say?”

 

Me: “I kindly asked how much you weigh? What’s the problem?”

 

Fat Butt’s Stupid Friend: “That is none of your fucking business, asshole.”

 

Me: “You asked me how tall I am. I thought we were getting to know each

other here, what’s your deal?”

 

(A self-checkout counter or whatever you call it opens up in front of us)

 

Fat Butt: “Shut the fuck up and buy your fruit, dick.”

 

Me: “No, we’re becoming friends here and I’m a gentleman. Ladies

first.”

 

Fat Butt: “Whatever.”

 

(Fat Butt and Fat Butt’s Stupid Friend waddle to the self-checkout counter or whatever you call it and buy the garbage that they’ll manage to finish eating before they get home even though it’s supposed to be microwaved first)

 

All right, so how weak and insecure are you if someone asking you a question about something that is visually obvious can offend you? And how “proud” of that visual thing are you if you are offended when somebody asks about it? This is why I just can’t buy into this whole big is beautiful crap. And it’s a kick in the tits to the whole feminism thing too. Women are strong and should legally have all of the same opportunities as men, and they do by the way, but if they make a rude comment or physically assault a man then he has no right to retort or hit back because women are too fragile to fight a man and they’re too stupid to know that insults are normally met with insults.

 

And the being fat thing. It’s what fucking ever. Nobody really cares if you are over weight; it’s the obviously obese people that are growing in size and numbers that has everyone up in arms. And just because you gave up on losing weight doesn’t mean that you can protect your feelings and ailing health by demanding that nobody is allowed to use words like “fat” and “obese” to describe you and then top it all off by saying, “I’m not fat. I’m beautiful!!” Lies do not become truths by saying them louder.

 

Unlike height, weight isn’t entirely genetic either. Some people are inclined to be a little bigger than others but your body does not make itself out of nothing. It’s made from whatever you put into it and whatever you work out of it. If you are a fat ass that tells people that you barely eat anything, I want you to stop eating all together. You already hardly eat anything so eating nothing won’t require much of a change in your diet. You have proven science wrong by getting larger without excess calories and that starvation is still a hypothesis and not a scientific fact. Unfortunately you’ll continue to get fatter because your body defies all logic but just think of all the money you’ll save because you don’t require food to live.

 

I am an adult and I know that it is mean and unfair to pick on any minority within a population because of basic math. Fat people are now the majority in this country and I am tired of being oppressed by them. So for any fat person to openly disagree and destroy any debate that is offered by a person afflicted with less body mass they are using their majority status to silence the words of the minority. Stop throwing your weight around to abuse the less fortunate that will be paying for your dialysis and orthopedic shoes when you are unable to work due to your beautifully large body. Because big is so beautiful that it’s deadly.

My birthday is next Sunday. It sucks that it’s on a Sunday because I’ll finally be able to legally drink and all of the bars and booze stores close early on Sunday. I mention my upcoming birthday because I’m starting to feel like my age is catching up to me within in a very short, in an almost immediate, timespan.

 

Today was a real doozy. You see, I am a meathead and have accumulated some injuries over the years and they all seem to have chosen to fuck up my life at the same time. My worst injury, the mother and most likely the spark to all of my other injuries, the general of my pains, domino zero, is my lower back injury. When I touched the gates leading into the unknown and less traveled by living man by dying in a fiery car wreck that claimed the lives of 22 women and children but spared my own, I suffered a dislocated vertebrae. This back injury wasn’t even diagnosed for several years because the doctors were more concerned about the fact that I had lost both of my arms in the accident and that I was unconscious for a month. So a few years later when I had these spastic feelings of my back trying to pull my ass into my torso, I decided to go see a chiropractor. The chiropractor took some x-rays and tried to fix it by jumping on my back a few times, but that dang vertebrae just stayed out of place.

 

Skip to what, like 6, maybe 7 years later. Within those years I had become the biggest specimen of glorious muscled man-beast that wasn’t the leading man in a comic book. So one day, right after I had moved back to Bumfuck Nebraska, I was dead lifting with the gumption of an illegally nitro-rigged cement mixer-dump truck hybrid warship. I’m not even talking about ripping 2 shake weights off the face of the Earth and locking out while heaving them to my hips, I’m talking 2 shake weights in each hand, bitch. So I dead lift these 4 shake weights with perfect form and then set them back down into the craters that they had created on the gym floor. Then these powerlifter guys that constantly watched me with envious and sometimes lustful eyes scuttled up to me and egged me on to do it again. Instead of swallowing my pride and walking away, I chose to prove that I have a small penis by compensating through feats of strength and I picked them 4 sumbitches up again. And as soon as I did it felt like somebody stabbed me in the back with a pitchfork and then that pitchfork was struck by lightning and then when I fell to the floor somebody tazed me repeatedly. Long story short, I ripped that dislocated vertebrae out of the scar tissue and it is now where it should be again. However, every now and then my back muscles spaz out and try to pull that vertebrae back to where it was for a decade, and the shit hurts horribly and makes me unable to walk.

 

So after that long story, here is how my day went. I have been feeling that my back has been getting worse for over a month now due to playing with my nephews and lifting weights and other random activities. Well I woke up around 8:30 AM. I tried to get out of bed but my back would lock up with spasms and holy shit, you don’t want to know what that feels like. So I laid in bed and did some stretches and I finally got out of bed at about 11:30 AM. I used a Resolve carpet cleaning broom as a cane to go to the bathroom and then go to my kitchen. I frazzled a couple of eggs, ate them with some hot sauce, and then opened the fridge to grab a grapefruit from the bottom shelf. Once again lightning came through my basement window and struck me in the back and I was lying in front of my opened fridge until 1:00 PM. I was comfortable on the kitchen floor and didn’t want to deal with more back spasms, so I ate my grapefruit caveman style on the floor and threw the peel and seeds towards the trashcan.

 

Finally, I got my self onto my feet with my Resolve carpet cleaning crutch and waddled to my lil’ babby home gym and grabbed this hollow bar that’s supposed to be used for who knows what and I’ve been using that as a cane instead. Then I crawled back into bed because my back hurts the least while I’m flat on my back. I spent the next 8 or 9 hours in my bed playing dumbshit games on my Ipad. I finally got the courage to try to get out of bed an hour ago and now that I’m sipping a sorority girl drink the pain is easing up.

 

I only tell this boring story because I myself am extremely bored and I would like to share the cruelties that father time can expend on a beautiful soul such as mine. I am currently sitting in a stolen fold out chair because it is the only chair that’s comfortable right now, and I fear getting out of it because of the spazzle attacks when I move. I’ll probably be fine after tomorrow as long as I don’t act like a maroon and try to pray to Lord Arnold through the media of iron. I thought that I would age gracefully because I have always looked young for my age, and I still do, but apparently I was wrong.

Fucking Facebox during this past month… let’s just settle this right now, okay? It is not a religious issue, it is a legal issue. Getting married provides the couple and the individual with a huge amount of legal rights and tax benefits and it is illegal to deny anyone specific rights due to their race, gender, or sexual preference. It’s 1,138 legal rights to be specific. But whatever, the church fucked itself in its own butt by getting all wrapped up in government matters. Churches are not only tax-exempt but they also receive tax money. That’s money paid by everyone, including the devious sodomites and carpet cleaners. In America, you cannot take money from a group of people without their given consent and then deny them rights, which are quite glorious, such as never having to pay property taxes if your gay lover is 100% bodily retarded due to injuries from fighting in an American war, and other stuffs. And yeah, that’s an actual benefit. Because by being gay, and whatever your personally held belief for someone being gay is doesn’t matter, you cannot deny an entire segment of the population a huge fucking list of rights because they choose to store meat in fart lockers or play hair guitars with their mouths.

 

And the Supreme Court is right and it is in place for a reason. Because when it comes to the majority versus a minority you cannot have 3 wolves and 1 sheep making a majority vote on what they’re going to eat for dinner; it just isn’t fair. The Supreme Court is that outside party that is able to look at the overall situation and then make a proper decision that isn’t based on emotions or religion or public beliefs that aren’t laws and whatever else.

 

 

The church is filled with scandals involving the butt fucking scenarios of underage boys, the butt fuckings of men, illegal money transactions, and random tales of racism. But this, gay marriage, that is the one thing that Christians will go to war for. Pick your fucking battles right you dinguses. You bunch of Chesters want to hate all gays, which really only translates into guys that eat man butt, because really, who hates lesbian porn, am I right? But you really think that two adults choosing to live together while enjoying the rights of all married couples is wrong. I’m not even trying to be super left wing liberal either, I’m just stating facts. If you think that this country was founded on Christian principles then, well, you’re pretty much right. But times change and they change for the better. Stop being a faggot hating faggot and learn to love and live with everyone as a whole instead. I have gay friends and I plan on being in their weddings and eating rainbow cake and being forced to suck dick suckers at gay bachelor (ette?) parties and whatever other gay shit they can think of. I’m not gay so it doesn’t really bother me, it’s all in good fun.

 

Oh, and after all of your religious preaching’s you worship a gay biker with a perfectly manscaped beard and conditioned flowing hair. Fucking hypocrites praying to a faggot looking Hell’s Angel while they hate on the very people that their “savior” would most likely try to get a phone number from. Spit on it and sit on it you gaylords.

Well this has been an eventful week! Last Friday I joined the top 39% of American citizens by acquiring a college degree. Although around these parts it’s considered a “what the fuck you going to do with that?” type of degree, I still graduated college. And wowsers, I sure did like college.

 

While receiving my college education I was introduced to binge drinking, marijuana cigarettes, stealing, I learned how to operate an internet system, and I lost my virginity.

 

I vividly remember the night that Radar and Birddawg forced me to get drunk for the first time. It was a Wednesday and I had stopped by their apartment to pick up a book from Furniture class that I had let their roommate Laser borrow. As soon as I walked through the door their apartment hit my face with a stink of incense and ramen noodles. Radar and Birddawg were unable to talk because they were coughing so hard and then Laser vomited on the floor while handing me a bottle of Night Train Express citrus wine. He told me that it tasted like fruit and that everybody was drinking it.

 

“But I don’t even turn thirty-one until this summer”, I said.

“You either open that bottle and turn it upside-down or you can open that door and upside-outside you ditzy bitch”, said Laser.

 

“That doesn’t make any sense”, I said.

 

Then Birddawg held a spatula to my throat in a threatening manner while baby bottling the entire bottle of Night Train down my throat. Apparently I turn into a slut when I’m drunk because I woke up with full makeup on my face and somebody had written “Insert Here” across my top lip and I had a tramp stamp above my ass crack that read, “Coal Train Entrance”. Radar had to explain to me what that meant and I was not proud of it after I found out.

 

Oh, and to anyone in their early to mid thirties that are still looking for that special person to lose their virginity to, just pick someone and get it over with. The first time is such a let down and vaginas are really weird and a little off-putting at first glance and sniff.

 

The biggest thing on my mind today though is a childhood friend, Heather Erickson. I’ve known her since Kindergarten or pretty much as long as I can remember. We were never best friends or anything despite being in many classes together from ages 5 to 18, and at one time we may have been silent enemies because she could always kick my ass at basketball, but we always talked to each other and did all the things that little kids do. Once we entered “adulthood” and bumped into each other at the bar or the gym we’d always be happy to see each other and play catch-up. That’s how childhood friends are; when you no longer see one another on a regular basis, not because one of you did something to ruin the relationship, but just because you separated in the natural drift of life. And when you randomly bump into each other later in life there are no hard feelings for not staying in touch and it’s easy to start up and maintain a conversation about what you’ve missed in their life. Whenever I saw Heather at the YMCA we’d go back and forth about our vast knowledge of fitness and my mental library of supplements and the world of meat-headery, and then we’d go our separate ways.

 

The most significant thing that I remember about my childhood with Heather was that in my three decades of talking shit and delivering insults, she was the first person that I apologized to out of guilt. It was either Kindergarten or first grade, but I pushed her off the side of the slide that had these two fireman poles on each side. She was trying to slide down one of them and I pushed her, causing her to fall and hurt her leg. She didn’t rat me out like most of the nerdy cowards that I picked on before they grew taller than me, but I always talked to her in school and I felt bad about it, so I later told her that I was sorry. I wasn’t forced to say sorry by an adult or because I feared that I would get in trouble, I told her that I was sorry because I genuinely felt bad about hurting her. That’s rare because I have trouble saying sorry.

 

Heather died of cancer this morning and I have been thinking about her all day. I haven’t talked to her since last summer and I don’t even remember what the conversation was about. I knew of her fight with cancer and we had skimmed the surface of it in conversations, but nothing too deep. I’ve spent the entire day moping around my poopy basement apartment and even crying a few times, due to my thoughts of her being gone and the reminder of my own mortality and the lives of other friends. It’s an odd coincidence for this to happen right after I finally finished college and have to throw myself back out into the rat race. Life is the strangest thing, you learn how to pick your own battles but sometimes the battle picks you.

 

I’m sorry Heather, and I hope there are better playgrounds where you are now.

This is… oh geez, um, this is really difficult for me to talk about. You see, I have been shopping at Wal-Mart almost as long as I can remember. I mean, I remember when I was just a wee child and my mother or father would take me to Hinky-Dinky or Alco or even K-Mart to buy food and clothes, and I was known in the village as the kid that went completely ape shit at every store unless my parents bought me the toy that I wanted. Then when I became a man, or maybe it was when I was around ten or so, Wal-Mart came into my life and changed it forever.

 

Wal-Mart was just a shitty generic store that mostly sold clothes and toys when I was a kid, but I grew and became wiser, and so did Wal-Mart. Until one day I was old enough to drive a car and shave my face and Wal-Mart had grown into a very respectable Wal-Mart Supercenter. It just happened so fast. You get so wrapped up in the daily grind that you fail to see them grow. One day they don’t even have automatic doors and the next time you see them they have self-checkout and motorized carts for the ham planets to drive around the store. The Wal-Mart Supercenter grew up to be so strong that it forced Alco and the gayly named Hinky-Dinky out of town. And who the hell still shops at K-Mart?

 

My high school friends and I shopped at the Supercenter daily. We even managed to master the art of shoplifting from Wal-Mart before they put in the detectors at the doors and I still don’t know how the cameras didn’t see us. My favorite thing to steal was the “No Shoplifting” signs because the irony made me giggle. There were so many different ways of scamming Wal-Mart back in the day, but now if you bought a new Playstation 3 and replaced it with your broken Playstation 3, they actually check the serial number when you return it. And all of the video games are behind glass and it’s impossible to walk around eating doughnuts from the bakery without having to pay for them first. Oh listen to me, I’m just rambling on about the good old days. I was so loyal to Wal-Mart and I went there so often that I eventually just called it Church.

 

Times have changed now. Both the Church and I are aging and falling apart. I messed up my shoulder a few weeks ago and I’ll be damned if my left knee hasn’t been fussing with me, all while Wal-Mart stopped selling my omega-3 eggs and their prices have gone up a pinch. Well anyway, I think it was about 4, maybe 5 weeks ago that I realized just how cheap and healthy it would be to make apples the keystone of my diet. This was before I learned the hard way that eating 5 or more apples a day would lead to the most violent and unforgiving diarrhea that isn’t caused by Ebola.

 

So I was about a week into this apple and protein shake diet and had yet to experience the horrible hot-water shits and I was driving to Wal-Mart late at night to stock up on more apples. Just as I was about to take a right to turn into Wal-Mart, I got a wild hair in my ass and decided to take a risk in life, so I turned left and drove into the Hy-Vee parking lot instead.

 

The first thing that I saw when I entered Hy-Vee, or the HIV as I call it, were the largest, plumpest, and most gorgeous red braeburn apples that I have ever seen. These things were the size of dinosaur eggs and when I approached the towering pile of gargantuan apples I looked at the sign to the right and it said, “48 Cents a Pound”. I bought 12 pounds of these freakish apples for less than 6 dollars. I had to buy more egg whites and olive oil while I was there because I didn’t want to pay for less than 6 dollars worth of apples using my debit card. Even with the other shit that I bought it was less than 15 bucks. And those HIV apples, oh boy, I gotta tell you that these were the best goddamn apples that this sumbitch has ever eaten. And they’re so damn cheap that I’m having my car engine converted so it can run off of apples. You know what else? The HIV’s egg whites were of much higher quality and slightly cheaper than the Church’s watery white crap. The HIV’s egg whites look like they just came right out of the shell, with their higher viscosity and clearer complexion. And the extra virgin olive oil that I bought there, well it tastes just like Wal-Mart’s olive oil and it’s about the same price so whatever.

 

Anyway, I have found myself turning left into Hy-Vee whenever I need to buy groceries now. I feel like a traitor or a heretic for leaving my beautiful Wal-Mart. And I thought those leviathan apples at the HIV would go back up to some ridiculous price once they were not on sale, but they’re still just 68 cents a pound. I haven’t bought any more of them though because I am unable to cope with the apple splatters every 2 hours, but still, that’s just so damn cheap. And guess what? The HIV sells omega-3 eggs now and the Church doesn’t. I’m even purchasing my usual Wal-Mart fare like popcorn and Sriracha Sauce at the HIV now. I still buy my generic Mio water flavoring stuff at Wal-Mart though because Hy-Vee water flavoring stuff tastes like cock-snot when mixed in my vodka.

 

I enjoy myself thoroughly while shopping at Hy-Vee. The people there are infinitely more attractive in both the visual and olfactory senses and I have yet to meet a checkout worker that I wouldn’t want to have intercourse with and they look genuinely happy to be there. But whenever I walk out the doors of the HIV, I am forced to look at my faithful Church staring back at me from across the street. And each time I look, those blue colors on the Wal-Mart sign appear to be just a little bit bluer.

(While mingling backstage during college plays, I would have everyone gather around or sit on my lap as I told these stories called “Two Weeks Later”. They were called that because all of them ended with someone dying two weeks later but you never knew who it would be. All of them were very politically incorrect and what I would call “so dark it’s funny”. I never wrote them down and I mostly made them up as I told them so I don’t remember most of them, but I still get comments now and then from people that enjoyed my “Two Weeks Later” stories. I got a few of those comments this week so here’s one of the stories I remember and I have to warn you that these stories are long.)

 

It was mid September in the year 2006, in the city of Kokomo, Indiana. Jeff had recently turned 14 and entered the 8^th grade. He was destined to be a future homecoming king and football star, his future was perfectly aligned to receive all of the wonderful perks that childhood popularity provides. It was lunchtime and Jeff was sitting at the popular table where stories of exotic and pricey summer vacations were told, and innocent young sexual glances were shot back and forth across the table like a pinball game. The popular lunch table almost glowed from the bright futures of every young person sitting at it.

 

On the outskirts of the lunchroom, Rocky was sitting at a lunch table that didn’t shine so bright, if it even shined at all. This isolated table was often rumbling with unwarranted grunts, drooling lips, and thousand yard stares. At the moment the table was in an uproar over the rightful ownership of a loose Animal Cracker that had fallen out of Francine the Forehead’s mouth and landed in Nurp-Nurp Nate’s applesauce. Rocky reached for the cracker himself but he was quickly scolded with a snort and an attempted bite from Peanut Butter Paul. Rocky may have been lacking in the smarts department but Peanut Butter Paul was pants-on-head crazy. This all made for a common lunch period at Rocky’s table, because it was the Special Education table.

 

Sitting next to Rocky was his best friend in the entire world, Barnaby Swandance. Barnaby Swandance had been Rocky’s best friend since Rocky was 2 years old. He went everywhere with Rocky and Rocky always kept a seat next to him empty so Barnaby Swandance could sit with him. Rocky had to constantly grumble loud warning noises for people not to sit in Barnaby Swandance’s spot as well as warn them to not sit on Barnaby Swandance, because Barnaby Swandance was invisible to everyone but Rocky. In Rocky’s malformed mind Barnaby Swandance’s name was as clear as day, but the rest of the world knew his invisible friend as “Jarwock Fleep” because of the way Rocky pronounced it.

 

Everyone in the school knew to steer clear of the empty seat next to Rocky. The students did this partly out of respect for Rocky but mostly because Rocky was a 16-year-old 7^th grader, about 6 foot 4, and weighed around 250. Rocky was a big boy and he lacked the ability to control his own strength.

 

On this day however, there was an unclaimed dare traveling around the popular table. The dare was to slam one’s lunch tray on the empty seat next to Rocky. To the popular kids it would be the simple act of making a loud noise by slamming an empty spot on a bench with a tray, but to Rocky it would be the assassination of the greatest rainbow colored alien fireman that he had ever known, it would be the death of Barnaby Swandance.

 

The dare made several trips around the table until everyone was staring at Jeff and his good friend Seth. Neither Seth nor Jeff wanted to do it, so it all came down to an arm wrestling match. The arm wrestling match was over before it started. Jeff was largely outmatched by Seth’s superior arm strength that had been developed through pitching for his summer baseball team and a hectic masturbation schedule forced upon him by recent puberty.

 

Jeff was already ashamed of what he was about to do, but he knew that he had no choice. In the 8^th grade, being unable to insult or attack those that are lower in social status is a weakness that will leave the person wounded and cause them to be the prey of the popular kids that are not restrained by empathy. Jeff tried his best to hold a fake smile on his face while he slowly finished his lunch. Within 3 minutes, Jeff had taken the last bite of his tater tot casserole and was sitting in front of a lunch tray that was empty besides a scraped clean plate and an empty milk carton. Jeff continued to talk to those around him, hoping that the bell would ring before he was forced to murder Rocky’s dearest friend.

 

“Stop fucking being a pussy you fucking stupid pussy!” Seth chortled towards Jeff in his 8^th grade lingo.

 

“Fuck dude, alright. I’m going man, just give me like a sec.” He replied.

 

Jeff stood up with his tray and looked around the lunchroom as he planned his prison movie-esque attack. He would walk directly to the trashcan, dump his milk carton, place his plate and silverware on the cleaning rack, but hold onto his tray and take the long walk around the right side of the room, where he would end up in the area known as the “Subderps”, where the Special Ed table was located. Jeff performed each of his preplanned actions and then found himself approaching Rocky and the empty spot on the bench next to him.

 

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion to Jeff. He walked past the trailer park table, his eyes fixed on the empty seat. The entire weeaboo table stopped trading Pokemon cards to watch Jeff’s hesitant walk towards the Subderps. The static chatter of the lunchroom slowly quieted down as every student sensed that something mean and meaningless, but entertaining was about to happen.

 

Rocky turned his head and made eye contact with Jeff, but he was looking right through him. Jeff smiled and came to a stop at the right of Rocky, behind the empty space on the bench. With one swift move Jeff raised his empty tray above his head and then slapped it down as hard as he could on the empty bench space beside Rocky.

 

“Wham!!!!”

 

Rocky immediately looked to his right and saw Barnaby Swandance’s fireman’s hat shatter and then his head disappeared into his own body and the rest of him was smashed flat onto the bench. There was so much glowing rainbow blood everywhere; it was the most violent thing that Rocky had ever witnessed. In a fraction of a second Rocky’s entire soul was crushed and he shouted his beloved Barnaby Swandance’s name in anguish.

 

“JARWOCK FLEEP!!!!!”

 

The lunchroom fell completely silent, and then it roared with laughter.

 

Rocky crouched over the pulverized corpse of Barnaby at a complete loss for words, though Rocky was always at a loss for words. He looked up at Jeff who was still standing there dumbstruck, holding the tray covered in invisible rainbow blood that had murdered his friend. Rocky stood up, towering over Jeff’s thin 5 foot 5 frame. All of the laughter stopped.

 

Rocky was absolutely livid. To this day, Amanda Kalhonik still swears that she saw actual smoke coming out of Rocky’s ears. Jeff was frozen in fear as Rocky grabbed Jeff’s head with his gigantic gorilla hands and in one awkward move he slammed him onto the ground, falling on top of him.

 

Rocky proceeded to pound Jeff’s face and chest with a potpourri of punches, slaps, and scratches. It took 3 handlers from the Special Ed department to pull Rocky off of Jeff and then they calmed him down with fish sticks and a Hershey’s bar. Jeff was sent to the school nurse where his minor wounds were treated and as soon as his nose stopped bleeding he was taken directly to the principal’s office.

 

Dr. Hinky was not happy to see Jeff in his office. Jeff began the argument saying that it was an accident, claiming that Rocky bumped into him and he dropped the tray on the bench as a result but Dr. Hinky wasn’t buying it. Eventually Jeff caved to Principal Hinky’s questioning and admitted that he was pressured into harming Rocky’s invisible friend. Jeff made a point to show that he was the only one that was injured and Rocky didn’t have a scratch on him but Dr. Hinky explained why Rocky could not be held accountable for his actions and he would not be punished. Principal Hinky understood the earth shattering weight of 8^th grade peer pressure, but he had to punish Jeff to make sure that the uptown kids stayed out of the Subderps during lunchtime. So Jeff was sentenced to an immediate 3 day out of school suspension. Jeff’s parents were called and his father came to pick him up. Along with the suspension Jeff’s parents grounded him for an entire month, without allowance.

 

Jeff would spend a month in misery but Rocky had spiraled into a lifetime of lonely hell. Rocky had no one to sit next to him on the bus and discuss topics like the government’s discretionary spending or challenging each other to see who could look at the sun the longest. Rocky’s life was empty, but the space to his right was not. He no longer kept a seat open for Barnaby Swandance to sit in, because Barnaby was dead. Although students were now sitting next to Rocky on the bus and at the lunch table, he felt more isolated than ever.

 

Jeff spent his 3-day suspension playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and enjoyed the time in his bedroom more than he had expected. During the time alone in his bedroom, he realized how horrible he felt about what he had done to Rocky. He decided that once his suspension was finished, the following Monday he would take the bus to school so he could apologize to Rocky personally. He knew that Rocky had severe learning disabilities, but he was sure that all people could feel compassion and forgiveness, as those were instinctive emotions and not complex thoughts.

 

The following Monday, Jeff passed on his mother’s offer of a ride to school. Instead, Jeff walked to the nearest school bus stop and waited. When the bus arrived he entered and quickly looked around to find Rocky. He looked towards the back and there, in the second to last row, was Rocky sitting with his head down and a student sitting on his right.

 

Rocky looked more lost than he had ever looked before, and that’s really saying something. Rocky was struggling to find a reason to go on with the suffering of the slings and arrows of life and Jeff hated himself for causing another person to be in such pain. Jeff approached Rocky’s seat near the back. He looked at the girl that was nervously sitting on Rocky’s right and politely asked her if she would mind moving and allowing him to sit there. She quickly jumped out of the seat and sat elsewhere, Jeff sat down next to Rocky where Barnaby Swandance had sat for the previous 14 years. Rocky silently leered at the floor without noticing Jeff sitting next to him. Jeff whipped up a sentimental smile and gently tapped on Rocky’s shoulder. Rocky raised his head and looked at Jeff.

 

“Hey, Rocky. Look, I’m really really sorry about what I did, man. I mean, it was just a joke and I know you don’t really understand it now, but like, maybe someday you will. But hey, I was just wondering if we could let bygones be bygones and you know, maybe I’ll even let you sit at the cool table with me. I mean it, I’m really sor-“

 

Rocky once again placed his gorilla hands on both sides of Jeff’s head and took him to the ground. Only this time Rocky was repeatedly slamming Jeff’s head onto the floor of the bus.

 

None of the students on the bus knew what to do. The bus driver, Marigold Skolnick, radioed for assistance and then ran to the back of the bus to pull Rocky off of Jeff.

 

Marigold pulled on Rocky’s shoulders and his Handy Manny t-shirt but Rocky’s grip on Jeff’s head was impenetrable. She could see that Jeff was unconscious and she feared for his life. Marigold looked around and saw a hardcover version of The Lord of the Rings trilogy resting on a young boy’s lap. She grabbed the book, raised it over her head, and slammed it down on the back of Rocky’s head. Rocky went limp and heaved over onto the unconscious Jeff beneath him.

 

The aftermath of this incident was a sad one. Jeff suffered severe brain damage that he would never fully recover from. Maybe it was a cruel and odd case of poetic justice that Jeff would now find himself sitting at the Special Ed table during lunchtime and he was now facing the same future that Rocky once faced. Rocky was hit in the back of the head so hard that it caused him to be permanently blind. His brain damage may have been more severe but little change was seen in his behavior other than being blind.

 

As for the bus driver, Marigold Skolnick, her life was left in shambles. The incident was recorded on the bus video camera and despite Principal Hinky’s efforts it was quickly leaked to Fox News where it was shown every 20 to 45 minutes for nearly 2 weeks. At first, the school defended Marigold’s actions but the general public was outraged. The city of Kokomo demanded that Marigold’s job as a bus driver be terminated and that she should face criminal charges for assaulting a minor. Principal Hinky gave Marigold his sincerest apologies but he told her that his back was against the wall and he had to fire her. She understood and left quietly with tears in her eyes.

 

Marigold Skolnick was 52 years old and very unemployable. She had been divorced for 18 years and her only son was serving 22 years in the Ohio penitentiary for selling 11 kilos of Sudafed to a methamphetamine drug lord. She had nobody to support her, she was not yet old enough for social security, and it was impossible for her to find a job due to being nationally known as the bus driver that ruined the lives of 2 children.

 

She got down to her last 20 dollar bill, and she used it to buy a 1.75 liter bottle of Barton’s vodka and a bottle of generic Unisom sleeping pills. Marigold wrote a heartfelt suicide note detailing how deeply sorry she was for what she had done, but also arguing that she had no choice and believed that she had been wronged. She took the entire bottle of generic Unisom with 8 shots of cheap vodka while sitting in a lawn chair on her porch. She was unaware that her regular use of Benadryl and sipping cheap vodka before bed would render this suicide attempt useless because of her immunity to antihistamines and crappy booze. After about 20 minutes, Marigold decided to go into her house and lay herself down in her bed downstairs for her final sleep. She was feeling very groggy as she walked into the house. She came to the stairs leading down to her bedroom and upon taking the first step she fell down the entire flight of twelve carpeted cement stairs. Her right femur broke and she had a crack in her hip. She yelled for help but since she was the most hated woman in America at the time, nobody came close enough to her house to hear her. She tried to dial 911 on her cellphone but the battery was dead because she was unable to pay her electric bill for 3 weeks and was unable to charge her phone nor pay the cellphone bill.

 

Marigold managed to stay alive a while longer with her broken bones at the bottom of the stairs because she had 5 Werther’s Original candies in the left pocket of her bathrobe. But two weeks later, she died.

Thursday, January 1^st, 2015

8:00AM:

I am spending what I plan to be my last college Christmas break in Denver Colorado at my older brother’s house. For some strange reason I got into bed around 11:00PM and fell asleep around 12:30, completely sober, on New Years Eve. At 8 in the morning my nephew that is just shy of being 4 years old jumps into my bed and begins intermittently hugging me and kicking me in the face while telling me that he’s going to Nebraska today. But I know that he isn’t going to Nebraska, he’s going to Brazil, and he’s just confused because he’s been driven to Kearney Nebraska, back to Denver, and now he is going to fly to Brazil within the span of 4 days.

 

8:30AM – 11:30AM:

My sister-in-law and my nephew are going to Brazil for the next 3 weeks and my brother and I are helping them do some last minute packing. Their flight leaves at 2:00PM. I mostly spend this time wrestling with my nephew and watching Katy Perry videos on Chromecast with him. He is only 3 and has an enormous crush on Katy Perry. He’s as wild as any 3-year-old but the moment she appears on the screen he sinks down into the couch and stares at her, and randomly blurts out, “Sh-she-she’s bootiful Unca Luke.” He is now saying the same thing about Lorde after I’ve shown him some of her videos. After eating 2 eggs for breakfast with a lot of coffee and skipping lunch we drive to the airport. For some reason I-25 was closed and we had to take a detour that nearly doubled our drive to the airport, but that’s another story.

 

1:00PM

My sister-in-law and nephew have successfully been transported to the airport, passed through TSA, and have boarded their plane to Miami International Airport. My brother and I waste no time in becoming lazy piece of shit bachelors and we find the nearest marijuana dispensary on the way home. Pot has been legal in Colorado since 2012, and although I lived in Denver for what, like five, maybe six years, I have never bought weed in a legal dispensary here in Colorado.

 

So we pull into the parking lot of a strip mall and park in front of a dispensary called, “The Green Solution”. We enter through a thick glass door into a small white room. A girl that is attractive in that nerdy yet kind of cool looking way is sitting at a lone desk with a computer on it, and she looks awkwardly happy to see us.

“Hello. How are you gentlemen today?”

“Oh, not much.”

“I need to see your driver’s licenses, thank you.”

We pull out our ID’s like fucking bosses and hand them over; in my mind I flicked it like a cigarette at her forehead.

A security guard that I could probably kick the shit out of enters the room through the specially locked door in the wall, as some sketchy tobacco smoker enters from the parking lot.

“I see you’re from Nebraska. Are you visiting or recently moved here?”

“I’m visiting. I’ve heard fairy tales about this state and I’m here to see if they are true.”

Grinning, she says, “Open the door when you hear a click.”

 

We walk to the door and wait for a click sound.

We try to open it… it won’t open.

“Did you hear a click?”

“No, I just thought…”

I try to open the door… no success.

“CLICK!”

I pull the door handle twice, really fast, and it fucks something up. I’m too anxious to get my grubby paws on all that fantastic weed.

“Okay sir, just wait until you hear the click and then open the door as you would normally open a door.”

So now she’s talking to me like I ate an extra chromosome for breakfast.

“CLICK!”

I calmly turn the handle and the great white door in the wall opens.

 

I enter what is best described as the Apple Store of Marijuana. It is a dark but spotless room with lighted glass counters and cases full of THC treats and tonics and tinctures and nerdy marijuana technicians describing these various technical advances to dorky men with bony arms and little beer guts in random lines throughout the store.

 

I am not a newby when it comes to using the poisonous narcotic known as marijuana. I admit that I’m not a regular player of the joint and vape game but I’ve been known to play a few rounds of puff-puff-pass when challenged by Skyrim and League of Legends champions, so I skip the familiar strains and waxes and walk directly to the majestic counter of marijuana edibles.

 

The edibles counter is full of delicious looking chocolates and candies. These wonderful Wonka candies would be tempting even if they weren’t loaded with THC. The employed marijuana addict behind the counter comes over to help me and the first thing out of his mouth is, “If you’re a beginner or light user you do not want to go with the edibles.”

 

In my mind I reply, “Pfft, nigger please. You don’t know my past and procedure.”

But with my mouth I say, “Oh, I’ve been smoking off and on for over half my life now.”

This is partially true because I first tried pot in my early teens, but I never got into the habit of smoking it consistently for longer than a few weeks at a time. I’m a binge smoker at best. I’m just not a fan of smoking stuff. If you die in a fire it’s most likely due to smoke inhalation and it’s considered a horrible way to die. And then for fun and recreation, some people burn stuff and inhale the smoke and that shit just doesn’t make sense to me. It makes me cough and short of breath and I just don’t like to party like that.

 

Anyway, my brother is hanging over my shoulder, hoping that I buy some of the candies, and of course I do. I buy one dozen of the Sour Strawberry Gummy Rings with 10mg of THC for $2.45 a piece.

 

The working weed fiend that warned me not to buy the edibles gives me one last bit of advice, “Only eat half of a gummy ring to begin with, and if you can handle it, go ahead and eat the other half a few hours later.”

 

1:30PM

The very second I get into the car, I unlock the super special child and midget fingered protected legal marijuana bag and take out one of the single condom looking packages that contains a gummy ring. I tear it open and eat half of the ring. It’s so delicious, I mean, it tastes like candy for Christ’s sake. My brother and I make small talk and drive back to his place. I can already feel a slight effect from the magic candy and as we near his house I look at the other half of the gummy ring and think, #YOLO, and then I eat the other half.

 

2:00PM

I’ve hardly eaten anything today, just eggs and coffee and weed candy, and now I’m drinking a beer. I’m sitting on my brother’s couch and we’re talking about I don’t even know. He’s repeatedly hitting the bong that he just bought and I’m getting giggly due to the weed candy gradually kicking in. And then, it happens.

 

2:01 PM

Holy fucking shit I have never been this high in my entire life! The Sour Strawberry Gummy Ring hits me immediately, and it hits me hard. Everything between my nose and my knees goes completely numb and I fall over on the couch in absolute shock of how instantly high I am.

 

2:02PM – 2:30 PM

To say that I am mentally lost in a parallel universe of unanswered questions and extreme panic would be a huge understatement. I am freaking the fuck out. I go into the classic case of checking my heartbeat and wondering if I’m still breathing even though I’m talking. Nothing makes sense. I want this shit to stop.

 

My brother is trying to talk me down by telling me things like, “just go with it” and trying to shift my focus.

“I know what you’re trying to do!” I shout back in accusation.

I can’t trust anybody when I’m eating these fucking candies.

 

2:31PM – 3:00PM

This is possibly the longest 29 minutes of my life. My brother has disappeared and I can hear him laughing at the TV downstairs. I spend this time walking around and staring at the legs that I am unable to feel. Not going into history but I’ve had some prolonged paralysis on the entire left side of my body and I managed to get it working again, and now whenever I lose feeling in any part of my body it throws me into instant fear. It’s the reason I hate taking any kind of painkillers. And you know, you’ll never hear a story about a person dying because they didn’t have enough painkillers in them, it’s always the opposite.

 

People say that pot helps you think deeper and come up with new ideas, but I feel like a one-armed Wal-Mart shopper with a Rubik’s Cube. I just can’t function on this bullshit. Finally, I’ve just had it with this Sour Strawberry Gummy Ring and I crawl into the guest bed and hope for the best. I enjoy that I am able to once again feel my back once it’s pressed against the mattress.

 

3:01PM – 4:00PM

Take a recess from my nightmare through the majesty of sleep.

 

4:01PM – 5:00PM

I wake up after sleeping for what feels like days. I snap out of a pleasant dream and open my eyes to a world where I am even higher than I was in the nightmarish situation that I tried to escape through sleep. I’m really really fucking high. I’m able to hold onto an intelligent thought long enough to get myself to the kitchen. I figure if I eat lots of food and drink lots of water then this bullshit will get out of my system faster.

 

I start with my nephew’s Trader Joe’s Fruity O’s cereal. I eat the whole box in less than 6 minutes. I move on to some salami stuff in the fridge, gone. I scramble some eggs and then wonder where they went. My brother comes upstairs and makes a pizza; I don’t think he even got a slice. I’m eating Chex mix and Christmas cookies throughout this entire kitchen event as well.

 

5:01PM – 10:00PM

We go to a bar and spend $50 on just appetizers.

Then we go to another bar and I spend another $20 on food.

I also get fairly drunk during this time.

 

10:30PM – 1:00AM

This shit just isn’t wearing off. I realize that the only thing that is calming me down is alcohol, so I’m drinking expensive Bulleit and Woodford Reserve whiskey by the bottle. Long story short, I finally drink myself to sleep on the couch but wakeup with zero hangover.

 

 

In Conclusion:

I’m done with weed. I’ve never been a fan of smoking it because it makes my lungs feel all screwy and now I’m deathly afraid of eating it. I don’t know, I guess I don’t mind bongs and vaporizers but still, marijuana is an evil plant put on this Earth to make people frightened and lazy. If there’s a drug that was invented by the Illuminati it’s weed. It makes you watch their TV shows, play their video games, and eat all of their shitty food. And stay away from strawberry candy, it can’t be trusted.

 

I spent the morning cleaning my apartment after a friend of some friends and a semi friend of mine was brought to my place for overnight care while Dr. J. Daniels’ evil fluids were eliminated from his body. Alcohol is a lot like Ebola in the way that you cannot cure the disease, you just have to treat the symptoms while it runs its course. Most of the cleaning was dedicated towards vacuuming popcorn off of my floor because we needed something to eat while his snoring and puking entertained us. Another sign that I am an asshole is that the only time I find hate speech as being hilarious is when it is written on a person that has drunk themself unconscious. I’m sure he came up with a creative way to explain the Swastikas on his body and “Jews = Lose” on his forearm at work today, and of course I used a permanent marker. A fun thing to do to drunk people that pass out in my apartment is to draw Swastikas all over their face with a permanent marker, and then leave the marker next to the bathroom sink. So when they are trying and failing at washing the hate symbols off of their face, they realize that they could cover up the Swastikas with more marker, and it’s debatable whether being covered in Swastikas or wearing blackface is more racially offensive. It’s like my own version of “Saw”.

 

That isn’t what I want to talk about though. I want to talk about a homeless cat that was once a very dear friend of mine but became one of my mortal enemies. I haven’t seen the rat bastard in years but I saw him roaming the street a block away last night and I saw him again this morning as he was pacing back and forth in my driveway, making eye contact with me the entire time. I ran inside and grabbed the same snow shovel that had cast the little shit from my apartment only 2, or maybe it was like 3 years ago.

 

I am a highly social person when I drink. I talk constantly while drinking alcohol, even when I am alone. A few years ago I was enjoying an ice-cold glass of Rich & Rare out on the stoop and a scrappy piss-yellow transient tabby cautiously walked up to me. Being talkative when I drink, I meowed at him until he decided to join me. I told this cat everything. I told this cat things about myself that I wouldn’t reveal during water boarding and for some reason the cat sat about 3 feet away and listened to every word. After a few hours I told the cat, “Goodnight, I love you, God bless you, don’t let the bed bugs bite, sweet dreams, goodnight, I love you with all my heart.” And I went to bed.

 

Well a few nights later I was once again drinking on the stoop and telling the mailbox about the time I peed on an electric fence as a kid, when the same little cat strolled up to me again. I was so happy to have a new friend that I went inside and got a can of albacore tuna for him. Not shitty cheap grey tuna, but pricey albacore tuna. He ate while I drank and told him my problems to see if he had any solutions, and his only response would be to look me right in the eyes whenever I stopped talking.

 

I would tell him something like, “You know, for having my own apartment right next to campus I should be getting a lot more ass.”

 

And he would stop eating and look me right in the eyes. It was as if he was implying that it was entirely my fault for rarely getting laid.

 

I would ramble off, “Christ almighty cat, inflation is getting out of control.”

 

Once again the cat would stop eating and look me in the eyes, implying that it was partially my fault because I was too lazy to go vote during the previous election.

 

He never purred a word, he never meowed a meow, but he always answered with his eyes. And the answer was an implication of everything being my fault, every time. This is how he earned the name Vlad the Implier.

 

So Vlad and I held nightly rendezvouses on the porch until the weather got too cold for me and his sorry ass still had to stay outside. So one night during the winter, it was sub zero temperatures and I was taking the garbage can down to the curb in my bathrobe at 3:00AM, and there was Vlad the Implier sitting on the porch waiting for me. I felt horrible for having ignored him for so long so I brought out another can of albacore tuna for him to eat in front of my door while I watched him through the window because I fucking hate the cold. He finished the tuna and I opened the door to throw the empty can in the trash, and as soon as I opened the door he ran inside my apartment. At the time there was a strict no animal policy in my decadent basement apartment, but I figured fuck it, he can spend one night at my place.

 

So Vlad the Implier made himself comfortable in my miniature weight room and I told him, “Goodnight, I love you, God bless you, don’t let the bed bugs bite, sweet dreams, goodnight, I love you with all my heart.” And I closed his door and went to bed.

 

In the morning I opened the door to my miniature weight room to find a few scattered cat turds and Vlad was gone. I looked everywhere for him and eventually found him nestled in the little storage space under my stairs. I just smiled and giggled at little Vlad as I reached out a hand to help him get out. Well the little fucker bit me! I yelled at him for a second before running to my laptop to look up ‘can cats get rabies?’ and then after I felt sure that Vlad didn’t have rabies I returned to give him a good talking to.

 

I screamed at Vlad, telling him to get the fuck out of my apartment. I explained to him that there was a strict no pet policy in my apartment and he just stared back at me with those eyes, implying that this whole situation was my fault. “Oh no asshole, you’re not pinning this one on me. Get out!”

 

But he just stared back at me, crushing me with self-blame. “Whatever dude”, and I closed the door to the mini weight room and went to class.

 

After class I grabbed a broom and went to the little nook under the stairs. Vlad the Implier went absolutely ape shit whenever I tried to force him out. “Whatever dude”, and I closed the door and went to bed.

 

The next day after class, I went to the door of my baby weight room and opened it. Vlad the Implier bolted between my legs and ran into my kitchen. I cornered him between the microwave and the sink and prodded him with a broomstick until I thought of a plan. I figured, oh, I’ll just grab him and throw him outside really quick. So I grabbed him and Vlad turned into the fucking Tasmanian Devil and tore my hands and forearms apart in a tornado of teeth and claws. I threw him against the wall and he ran into my living room.

 

I devised a plan to lure him outside with a can of albacore tuna. I opened a can of tuna and waved it in front of him. Once again he went nuts and clawed at me. Fucking traitor. I got so pissed off that I loaded my BB caliber handgun and pointed it at him. I didn’t know if it would be strong enough to kill him but I knew that it would be strong enough to make him hate his life. I pointed it right at his face and again, those eyes stared back at me. Implying that my problems will only worsen as long as I resort to violence as a solution. I put the gun back on top of my fridge and tried with the tuna again.

 

I placed the tuna in the hallway where he could see it. After a few minutes he slowly approached the tuna, so I moved the can to the bottom of the stairs. Then I moved it to the top of the stairs… and then I placed it outside the door with the door propped open. Vlad just stared at the can of tuna sitting outside but he refused to go out the door. It felt like a brisk -25 degrees outside so I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to leave at that moment. But he just stared at the can, and I waited.

 

After a few minutes I reached for the snow shovel next to the door. I moved ever so slowly so Vlad wouldn’t notice my movements. After I had the shovel in my hands, I placed it behind him and whispered a threat. “Vlad, get the fuck out of my apartment or I am going to launch you into fucking orbit.”

 

Vlad the Implier didn’t even flinch at my warning. So I quickly scooped him up into the snow shovel, ran outside, and catapulted him across the lawn. Of course he landed on his feet because that’s what cats do, but he ran off screeching like a little bitch. For a while after that I saw Vlad on or near the campus, just looking at me with those eyes. After about a year I didn’t see him anymore. But now he’s back and I know it’s him because of that douche bag look he gives me. I make sure my door is shut tight every time I take out the trash and I’m glad that I won’t be here next summer where I could be drinking on the porch and fall prey to Vlad’s charm again.

 

That’s a really long story and the only people I’ve ever told it to are Birdman and Hans. I don’t know why I’ve never thought that having a stray cat running wild in my apartment for 48 hours was all that interesting, but Hans brought it up after Furniture class the other day and it’s a really strange coincidence to start seeing Vlad the Implier lurking around my apartment again. If Vlad makes a move on my apartment again I’m going to decapitate him with my snow shovel, but I know I’ll drop my shovel and cower when he looks at me with those eyes